WC regards Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R, Lunacy) as a media whore. A media whore is someone who will do or say anything, no matter how outrageous, to get attention from the national media and social media. Outrageous conduct is a media whore’s norm, because the media will always react to outrageous behavior. WC can…
It’s been a while since WC inflicted an ear worm on his innocent readers. If you are of a certain age, and ever owned a coon skin hat, this blog post is for you. Besides, WC is still buzzed with painkillers… Bethel, Alaska, in 1958, did not have television. Or a movie theater, really. But…
In the late 1980s, Alaska suffered one of its worst recessions, trapped between a commercial and residential real estate bubble and a collapse in crude oil prices. Fully half of Alaska’s financial institutions failed. The shockwaves echoed through the state’s economy for years afterwards. In this sometime series, WC will have a look at some…
WC has always had mixed feelings about the late President Lyndon B. Johnson. But WC was in Johnson City, Texas for a wedding, and paid a visit to the LBJ Ranch National Historic Park that’s a few miles away. It seems like a good time to re-examine Johnson and his legacy. Johnson’s family had deep…
In the late 1980s, Alaska suffered one of its worst recessions, trapped between a commercial and residential real estate bubble and a collapse in crude oil prices. Fully half of Alaska’s financial institutions failed. The shockwaves echoed through the state’s economy for years afterwards. In this sometime series, WC will have a look at some…
(This is a part of an eclectic, sometime series on artists WC has known, liked and doesn’t want forgotten. The first post in this series was on Steve Goodman. The second was on Sir Terry Pratchett. WC has also written about Laura Nyro, Bill Berry, Jo Ann Wold and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant and many others. Most recently, WC wrote about Dave Carter.…
In the early 1970s, WC was in the thralls of an epic crush on a high school classmate. She was smart enough to be wary of WC – she’s one of the few of WC’s high school classmates to get a PhD. She avoided most of the throes and distractions of that tumultuous decade; more…
This post is dedicated to the late Dr. Vera Alexander, marine scientist, equestrian, musician, philanthropist and much more. It was WC’s privilege to serve as a marine technician on the R/V Acona in 1967 on a cruise where Dr. Alexander, a newly minted PhD, did some of the original research on the relationship between Harbor…
In 1963, when WC was a surly teenager, and his Dad was feeling unusually prosperous, we took a late spring vacation from Fairbanks to visit the relatives in central California. For five of the ten days, WC and his brother were parked with their Aunt Helen, WC’s dad’s sister, while the parents went to Vegas.…
Fort Jefferson, the 16 million brick white elephant of a fort built on Garden Key, Dry Tortugas, was constructed mostly with slave labor. Mis-engineered from the start, chasing military technology but never catching up and, in fact, never completed, it’s a fascinating case study. The federal government had several motives for building Fort Jefferson, but…
For those who aren’t familiar with the Lincoln Assassination and its various players, Dr. Samuel Mudd was the physician who treated John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin. Booth broke his leg jumping from Lincoln’s presidential box at Ford’s Theater. It was never clear whether Mudd knew of Booth’s plans in advance, whether he was a part…
WC subscribes to too many email lists. One of those email lists recently coughed up an article on the early stages of the Moravian church’s missionary experience in the Kuskokwim River delta in southwestern Alaska. “Moravians and Yup’ik on the Kuskokwim River Delta,” by Ryan Barwick has an interesting defensive tone, but is based on…
On December 5, 1969 the Oregon Daily Emerald, the student newspaper at the University of Oregon, sent WC to cover a speech to be given by Ted Gold. Gold wasn’t well known at that point, but was a member of Students for a Democratic Society – the SDS – and a future member of the…
WC was able to challenge Geology 101 – 103 and so missed the introductory geology courses at the University of Oregon, derisively called “Rocks for Jocks.” “Challenge”? Maybe that’s no longer a thing. But back in the late Pliocene, when WC was an undergraduate, you could meet the course requirements of any entry level science…
You’ve probably never heard of Thomas Lloyd, Billy Taylor, Charley McConagall or Pete Anderson. They were gold miners, who had followed the gold rush to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1903. Gold miners in Alaska in the 1900s were pretty tough. Certainly tougher than east coast poseurs like Dr. Frederick Cook, a man who didn’t climb Denali…
This blog post is dedicated to CMK, WC’s legal secretary at the time. In the two years she worked for WC, she had to learn three different word processing systems, two different accounting systems and still answer the phone. WC’s belated thanks, CMK. Despite what revisionist computer historians may say, the Apple Macintosh wasn’t the…
In 1991, WC was trapped in a broken elevator in his office building with a woman who was obsessed with the alleged witchcraft in a series of Junior High School language arts books recently adopted by the local school district. “Do you know,” she told WC, “That if you photocopy the illustration at pages 119-120,…
Scott Peak is the easternmost glaciated peak in the Denali Massif in central Alaska. At 8,800 feet, it’s not a huge challenging climb, but it was the site of a long series of unsuccessful climbing attempts by WC in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Scott Peak is flanked by six different glaciers. The best…
In August 1984, WC’s ex-wife SAS was working as a commodities trader on the fifth floor of the Key Bank Building in downtown Fairbanks. The New York commodities desks open at 9:00 AM Eastern time, so she was at work on August 16, 1984 at 5:24 AM Alaska time when she heard a very loud…
Most of Alaska, like most Alaskans, originally came from somewhere else. John McPhee, Assembling California WC’s second year geology classes at the University of Oregon – prosaically enough, Geology 201, 202 and 203 – were taught mostly by visiting professors. The second quarter class focused on structural geology, a refreshing change after the tedious and…
For parts of two summers, in 1965 and 1966, WC worked as a camp counsellor for the Boy Scout camp at Lost Lake, 65 miles southeast of Fairbanks. One of a camp counsellor’s duties was to accompany a Boy Scout troop as they made day hikes and overnight hikes away from the scout camp. In…
When WC was visiting family in his old home town, Stockton, California, probably in 1959 or so, WC’s older cousins, Gary and Bob, were working as after-hours maintenance workers at the Micke Grove Zoo. Back then, what’s now the Lemur Island was the Monkey Island. As cousin Bob hosed off the walkways and emptied the…
Mrs. WC came to Alaska “for a few years” in 1991 and ended up staying for 24 years. WC accepts responsibility for some few of those years. But what made her 24 years in Alaska truly remarkable was that she stayed in spite of her first day in the state. Mrs. WC first came to…
WC doesn’t believe in omens, but if you do, you’ll have to hope it’s not a bad omen to start the new year’s blog posts with an obituary. In 1965, WC was casting about for a science fair project. WC’s high school chemistry teacher, Barbara Page, had challenged WC to come up with something different,…
Harry Badger arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska before it was Fairbanks, when there was little more there than E.T. Barnette’s recently erected trading post, Barnette’s Cache. Newly appointed Territorial Judge James Wickersham described Barnette’s cache: A rough log structure, with spread-eagle wings [that] looked like a disreputable pig sty, but was in fact, Barnette’s trading post,…
(This is a part of a sometime series on artists WC has known and doesn’t want forgotten. The first post in this series was on Steve Goodman. The second was on Sir Terry Pratchett. The third one was about Fairbanks’ Bill Berry. This one is also close to home.) In 1967 or 1968, WC’s AP…
Some random neuron in WC’s aging brain fired off recently and the lyrics to the theme to The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp started running through WC’s head. WC can say with certainty that he hasn’t heard the tune in something like 60 years. WC can’t remember for five minutes where he left the…
WC met the talented and charming Vietnamese artist Anna Huong at her studio/gallery in the Dimond Mall in Anchorage in September 1984. Huong, as WC recalls, had been a newspaper reporter in South Vietnam, and like many of her people had come to the United States as a refugee in 1975. She had lost everything…
WC attended exactly one (1) National Hockey League game while at law school in Chicago. It was a long, long bus ride out to Chicago Stadium, where the Blackhawks played, the game didn’t start until 8 PM and the ride back across the west side was . . . gnarly. And even back then a…
WC first ran this blog post about eight years ago. A color photo from the desert hike turned up, which made an excuse for this repost. WC’s sophomore spring break was filled with all of the kind of stupid ideas you’d expect. The first was the idea of hitchhiking from Florence, Oregon down U.S. Highway…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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